Crowds in Edinburgh form a queue lasting hours in order to pay respects to ex Queen

As the title’s editor it was my intention to witness and write about this lying in state of Elizabeth II, by far the longest reigning sovereign, in London.

Then also the funeral service there this coming Monday.

But is became increasingly clear that the number of people hoping to pay their respects to our former Queen will be vast, and barely manageable. It only takes a small proportion of a UK population of 70 million to come to the capital of the United Kingdom to soon be counted in the millions.

Hence why I write this from Edinburgh, a short hop from Belfast.

My hope was that there might be a better chance of getting into St Giles’ Cathedral in Scotland, which as a country has a smaller overall population than Britain’s only megacity.

But it was also clear, particularly after seeing the crowds lining Her Majesty’s long journey from Balmoral, that even in Edinburgh the number of mourners would be immense.

And so it proved.

I flew over yesterday morning but then lost vital time getting to good vantage points in the city because I had to attend editorial meetings remotely in preparation for today’s paper.

In the event like hundreds of thousands of other people, I stood for more than 10 hours in and around the Royal Mile (that steep road that heads from the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood to Edinburgh Castle, which is located high on a rock) and then queuing to get into the cathedral.

From a time earlier in the morning than when I reached the city centre before midday, that uphill route for the procession of the Queen’s coffin to the cathedral was thronged with crowds.

Various approved crossing points, where barricades were removed so that onlookers could move from one side of the Royal Mile to the other, were gradually closed off in preparation for the cortege. One woman beside me missed such a closure and pointed in dismay to her flat upstairs window right across the street which was now perhaps a two mile walk away, one mile in one direction to be able to cross the road away from the crowds, and one mile back.

By 2.30pm the throng was about half a dozen deep on each side of the road, so almost filling the winding pavement space between the barriers and the old buildings behind them.

Near the barrier in front of me was Susan Lusk and William Jopson from British Columbia, who by chance were in holiday in Bamoral when the Queen died. Dismayed by the news, they wanted to be present yesterday.

Asked if they thought Canada would keep the monarchy as head of state after the passing of Elizabeth II, Ms Lusk said forcefully: “I hope so.”

Beside me to the left was a woman from Co Antrim, now living in Scotland, who did not want to give her name but had been similarly determined to come to pay her respects to the late Queen.

The funeral procession came up the Royal Mile with no fanfare, indeed no noise apart from the hooves of the two police officers leading the way, ahead of the hearse.

Soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Scotland were the guard to the cortege, and walked in silence around the vehicle containing Her Majesty’s coffin.

Then the four siblings, the former monarch’s children, Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward followed.

There was no noise. At the point where I was standing, with an outlook similar to that in photograph above after the procession had passed, a few people began to applaud, but for some reason it did not gain traction with others.

I wonder whether there was a feeling that the Queen was such an esteemed and famous person, and her prominence at the top of world leaders so sustained for so long, that such a clapping gesture was gratuitous?

My own sense was that the dignity and solemnity of the moment was enhanced by a lack of the applause that is now the norm when a coffin containing a well known public figure passes by.

Then it was time to get in the queue for the cathedral, which meant walking a mile to a park in Edinburgh called the Meadows to get arm bands, and joining a painfully slow line back to St Giles’.

This did not move at all for the first two hours, because the public was not even allowed in to file past the coffin until almost 6pm.

It was tedious yet the good natured crowd, and the reason for people being there, paying tribute to by far the longest serving monarch, meant that the five hour duration was gruelling but not horrendous.

People got to know the people around them in the queue so that they could vouch for each other as non queue jumpers and take toilet breaks.

Up ahead of me was Derick Pennock from South Shields with his daughter Hayley. He served in the army, including in Northern Ireland (his wife Ann is from Co Antrim), and said simply that he wanted to register his admiration for the Queen.

Beside me in the queue were Andrena Crawford and Elizabeth Harry, both members of Canongate Kirk, the church the Queen attended when she was resident in Edinburgh.

I got to the cathedral after 9pm. Filing past the coffin was a strange but meaningful moment, and worth the wait. It was the crown at one end of the coffin that made it easier to absorb the fact the Queen was within.

The one mile, five hour line was far shorter than it is expected to be in London.

Earlier I had done some basic arithmetic in my head and worked out that even if the flow of people past the coffin is maintained at a swift pace of one person per second, that is a mere 80,000 or so people per day (in fact it is 86,400: 60 seconds x 60 minutes x 24 hours).

Even if that capacity is doubled by having people stream past on either side of the Queen without stopping, all day and all night, it means that over four days not much more than half a million can be accommodated. In a country as populated as England, that might not be enough. The wait to see the Queen Mother lying in state in 2002 was 24 hours.